A Day in the Life of a Ring-wraith
by Kyrri
Summary: More serious than the title would imply - please be gentle, this is my first try! Please Review!


A Day in the Life of a Ring-wraith.  
  
Darkness is all I see. . . Evil is all I hear. . . Death is all I know. . .  
  
The Shadow has passed over me a long time ago, born of lust and greed for a power that should never have been mine to command. Born within the weaknesses of Men, sprung from our shortcomings as a cancer that grows with each silent breath we take - failure, complete and total with no room to move backwards, no way to repent our trusting naivety. Nothing remains for us, save ceaseless nights and despairing shadows of the past to keep us company as each surreal heartbeat of existence brings us closer to time's void.  
  
Times turn, sleep and slumber engulfs me in momentary peace, bringing forth dreams of what once had been, dreams of all that now lays lost and scattered within the past's embrace. Light. . . once there was such a thing. Sun. . . once She did not drive us to the darkness, but warmed our bones and set us free from night's embrace. Hope. . . once we knew this, but time has passed and taken any such fragile thoughts from our minds.  
  
Green light enters the confines of my thoughts, bringing wakefulness to my spirit, even as my mind revolts against it - even as I plead for true death instead of this never-ending nothingness. This hopelessness that fills me is enough to drive any creature insane, it is as a living thing inside of me, breathing, biting and clawing upwards, until such time that it would escape from me in a wail of utter misery, but my voice is not my own and thus I remain silent.  
  
Chains clatter in the dark, striking together in a rattling symphony for which our own imagined cries are the ghastly tune. Pain and agony sound in my head as I too turn to listen, willing myself to stop feeling anything, willing myself to take control, but in vain.  
  
The gears turn again as I listen to the interrogation - horror welling up inside me, but unable to stop, unable to turn my back - listening to the creature's cries. Revelling in his despair, though it will never equal mine.  
  
I feel Its presence and It drives me to pay greater attention. This One thing that will and has plagued my existence for time immeasurable as it would seem to me. My downfall, my salvation, my master and my servant, torturing, treacherous beast that writhes in my hand and binds my soul to another to which it in turn is bound. So it would seem that we are all, each and every one of us a slave to the devices of another.  
  
Our master stirs again, he calls to us and we obey, coming fort once more to cover all the lands in fear, overshadowing all in a cloak of black emptiness, even as we cloak the emptiness we have become in a simple disguise of black cloth and armour. Hatred, cold and hard, hatred not for fair things as one would expect from such as us, but hatred for what I am. A mere Shadow of what I was, a servant, frail and wary to anger the Master, where I myself had once been King.  
  
Lost, I have lost it and it is gone forever - my will to fight, to survive, to breath and live - gone, like a fire, extinguished by the onslaught of the rain.  
  
Night is all I feel. . . Bitterness is all I taste. . .  
  
A prayer would pass my lips, if I could remember how to pray or if there was a god to whom I could beg and plea for mercy - my thoughts are not my own, my mind has been stolen, my grief cannot rule me, for even that I am denied.  
  
Laughter - I hear it now, in the back of my mind, a merry chuckle that would stir in me some feeling, a longing for a warm bed after the day is done, a merry fire leaping to fill the air with its red light and the silken touch of lips on mine. Are these my thoughts? Are these my memories? Did I once know these things?  
  
The memory seems frail and quickly slips into oblivion, driven away by the silent words of my Master, filling my mind with thoughts of that which He had lost, commanding me to ride forth, to seek it, to find it, to bring it to Him. . .  
  
The doors tear open before us, our horses prance beneath us, and slowly we see the world again, but with the eyes that He has given us - no fair thing passes my gaze, only bleakness and echoing shapes of half-seen and half-remembered things. My stead frisks beneath me, eager for freedom and I loosen the reins in my hands to give it such - to let him bear me forth.  
  
Behind me the creature's cries still carry into the night. Screams, terror, torture, pain - these things I remember only to well. These things I have come to love and they would fill my existence, make the fate to which I have been banished seem more bearable, but still something pulls at the back of my mind - some faint recollection of who I was and what I want to be again - a man. Not the devil I have become, nor the hunted thing, which hides from the light and seeks salvation within the dark of night, but human, with human comforts and need. With human aspirations and human fears. Phantom lips press against mine and I feel again what it could mean - to be alive. Whispered words return to me - promising love and light for all eternity, filling my soul with silent hope, something it has not known in many years.  
  
Love - it seems a mockery to all life that I could experience this feeling, that the monster that I have become can remember what it was like to be loved and to love in return. A face swims before my mind's eye - undefined and indistinct, but with it comes an overwhelming desire, a sudden need that courses through my entire being, reawakening in me things I was sure that I would never feel again.  
  
Doom is what I smell. . .   
  
We brake through into the world and Death rides with us. We carry Him with us always, wherever we go. Beware, my love, my world of old for in us lies your destruction - the One wills it so. Bar your gates, and lock your doors against us, do not let us pass the threshold of your home, for we know not what we do and have no control over our actions, even when we grieve for what we have done under Sauron's spell. Consciousness is gift in us as it is in all humans - for we were once such, but unlike men we have no choice - we do as the Master commands and the Master always wishes doom and destruction.  
  
And so no lesser evil shall be done by beings such as those my brethren and I have become. No greater Darkness has walked in this world before us and none shall ever pass this world that possess greater potential for causing mankind's impending doom than we. We are the End of the World as it has always been. We are the Beginning of a New Age, an Age that will be wreathed in flame and wrought in destruction. We simply Are, and We will always be - for what we are lies in the heart of men, even the most honourable of what was once our kind, for we were the noblest of our proud race.  
  
And yet in the Shadow lies many pathways, many strange things that the living can never know - in death lies so many things - answers to questions that remain unasked by close-minded folk. In death life is revealed for what it is, a gift given to many that do not understand the magnitude of what they have received. And in death one more fateful thing is brought painfully to light for me - I loved life, I miss freedom and I have not stomach for what I do, but my will is not my own and my fate is bound to the One and thus I go, to do my Master's bidding till such time as I can reclaim my conscience as my own, till such time that I can begin to bring my Master low.  
  
Vengeance is what I will have.   
  
Do not invite us into your hearts, children of this world for we deserve no pity and have earned no right to be saved. Guard against us, for what we are lives in you too, sons of men - our wish for power led us here and no man is without ambition. When good becomes evil and light turns to shadow a warning I would give you. Think well upon what fate would bring you, gifts given in friendship are beautiful things, gifts given in truce far fairer, but gifts received from those who wish to do harm are better left unopened - be careful of all things to easily given. 


End file.
